Numerical Benchmarks for the Operational Criteria of Self-Modeling Dynamics
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This is a companion computational benchmark to Consciousness as Self-Modeling Dynamics: A Two-Layer Hypothesis of Integration, Self-Appropriation, and the Affective Synthesis (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21767269), hereafter the parent paper. That paper proposed a substrate-independent hypothesis in which five properties are derived from a single primitive (self-modeling closure), and it attached to several of them operational criteria: a split Lyapunov spectrum distinguishing a living core from a dead or disintegrated one; an operational distinction between valence that modulates a self-model’s dynamics and valence that merely shifts an output; an encoding-invariant closure threshold defined through mutual information at a fixed physical scale; and the claim that self-modeling closure can emerge under task pressure rather than being built in. Those criteria were asserted to be definable, non-empty, discriminating, and falsifiable; one of them (the closure threshold) drew a specific reviewer objection about encoding artifacts. The purpose of this work is to turn each asserted criterion into a demonstrated one, in isolated minimal simulations with declared failure conditions, and to do so without touching phenomenality, which the parent paper places outside the scope of a physical theory by a declared deflationary stance. We report four results and one transparently diagnosed-and-repaired confound. All criteria tested behave as the parent paper predicts; a recurring finding is that responses are graded, notdichotomous. The paper is self-contained: every figure is accompanied by the numbers behind it, and the complete, runnable source (NumPy only, fixed seeds) is included in the appendices. We are explicit throughout that these are stand tests of individual structural criteria, not a demonstration of an assembled conscious system, and that none of them bears on phenomenality.
Author: Mahlyankin, Stanislav
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7219684353